Spectrum boosts 12bit PC digitiser card with PCIe 3.0

New Products | March 9, 2022

By Nick Flaherty

test & measurement Interconnect & cables

Spectrum Instrumentation in Germany has boosted the performance of its PC digitizer cards using 16 lanes of PCIe 3.0 technology.

This allows the cards to stream acquired data over the bus at 12.8 GB/s, nearly twice as fast as any other PCIe Digitizer currently on the market.

The higher transfer speed allows the cards to continuously run at their maximum sampling rate of 6.4 GS/s, with 12-bit resolution, and transfer the acquired data directly to PC memory for storage, or even to CPUs and CUDA-based GPUs for processing and analysis.

The M5i.3330-x16 a single channel card samples data at rates up to 6.4 GS/s, while the M5i.3337-x16 (pictured) dual channel card offers synchronous 3.2 GS/s sampling on both channels, or the full 6.4 GS/s on a single channel.

With 12-bit resolution, the digitizers offer dynamic range up to sixteen times better than most digital oscilloscopes or comparable 8-bit digitizers, says the company. The extra resolution improves voltage measurement precision and allows users to capture and characterize fine signal details. An internal phase locked loop (PLL) provides timing measurements with better than 1 ppm accuracy.

The cards feature fully functional front-end electronics with over 2 GHz bandwidth, programmable full-scale ranges from ±200 mV to ±2.5 V and variable offset. Large on-board memories make the capture of long and complex waveforms easy. 4 GB (2 GSamples) of memory is provided as standard and can be expanded to 16 GB (8 GSamples) if necessary.

Single-shot and multiple-waveform recording modes are supported, together with trigger time stamping. Multiple recording divides the on-board memory into segments and allows the acquisition of numerous events, even at very high trigger rates.

This supports serial bus testing or systems using stimulus-response processes, such as those found in LIDAR and RADAR systems. The on-board memory can also be used as a ring-buffer, working much like a conventional oscilloscope, or as a FIFO-buffer, for the continuous streaming of data to the PC environment.

To verify the transfer speed of the new digitizers, the company ran the products in a variety of different PC platforms. The maximum transfer speeds were obtained using an AMD EPYC Model 7252 server processor.

The company also tested, at full speed, direct RDMA data transfers from the digitizer cards to an Nvidia model P2000 GPU. The capability to stream data directly to a CUDA GPU with up to 5000 processing cores is possible using the company’s SCAPP (Spectrum’s CUDA Access for Parallel Processing) package, which is available as a low-cost option. SCAPP includes the necessary drivers for CUDA GPU support and allows users to develop their own processing routines. Working examples are also included for common functions like continuous averaging for noise reduction or FFTs for spectral analysis.

Installed in a PC, running a Windows or Linux operating system, the cards can be programmed using almost any popular language. This includes C, C++, C#, Delphi, VB.NET, J#, Python, Julia, Java, LabVIEW, and MATLAB. Each card comes with a software development kit that contains all the necessary driver libraries and programming examples. Alternatively, the SBench 6 GUI provides full card control along with a host of data display, analysis, storage, and documentation capabilities.

The front panel has SMA connectors for the channel inputs, clock and trigger inputs and outputs, as well as four multi-functional digital I/O lines for integration into a test system. The extra clock and trigger connections make it possible to synchronize the cards with additional digitizers or other measurement devices.

“These bring to market a unique feature set that makes them ideal for situations that require high frequency signal acquisition and analysis. For example, they’re perfect for capturing the signals found in fibre optics, mass spectrometry, semiconductor testing, RF recording and quantum technology, just to name a few applications,” said Oliver Rovini, Chief Technical Officer at Spectrum. “We’re also delighted by the data transfer speed these cards achieve. Shifting data at rates up to 12.8 GB/s to the latest processor (CPU and GPU) technologies opens up new applications where intensive signal processing is required.

“AI systems are now using radio and microwave sensor technology for object detection and identification. This involves the capture and analysis of signals in the MHz and GHz ranges, and it results in the processing of vast amounts of information. Similarly, astronomers scan the skies to collect light or radio waves from distant celestial objects. The data volumes they collect are enormous and analysing it, to reveal the secrets of the universe, requires a huge amount of processing power. That’s where the faster bus on the M5i products is a game changer,” he said.

“This allows continuous streaming of all the data directly to very advanced processing systems. No data is missed, and it can be processed as fast as it arrives. Faster data transfer also provides users with improved measurement speeds and that leads to better productivity, particularly for those running automated testing processes. And finally, there’s the enhanced resolution. This increases measurement precision and that allows test engineers to run trials with tighter tolerances. In turn that enables better quality control.”

The cards carry a 5-year product warranty with free software and firmware updates, as well as customer support direct from the engineering team for the whole life of the product.

The M5i.3330-x16 and M5i.3337-x16 digitizer cards are available now.

www.spectrum-instrumentation.com